“I’m moving onto the balcony,” Lawe reported.
“Covering the stairs,” Mercury spoke softly into the link. Each of the Breed Enforcers had reported in by the time Dash slid into the hallway beside her, his weapon held ready at his thigh as his gaze tracked over the condition of her shirt.
He moved to the door, laid his head against it and inhaled slowly as Dawn moved to Seth’s door. She checked it, clenched her jaw, then nodded. Someone who shouldn’t have had been there as well. The scent was off, odd, as though something were covering it, barely disguising it.
“Moira, Noble, move in on the main room, balcony and back stairs,” she ordered into the link. Dash gave her a hard look when she indicated his attention to her room, and hers to Seth’s. Her mate’s room. Someone had dared to invade it.
Dash nodded slowly.
He counted to two, gripped her doorknob then swept into the room like a shadow of death. Dawn moved to the side, waited, gave Dash time to secure the room and move to the connecting door before she did the same. She jerked Seth’s door open, went in at a roll and came up ready, her gaze scanning the darkness of the sitting room and moving unerringly to the open bedroom door. The scent was strong here as well, causing her nose to wrinkle. There was a human scent beneath it, but something astringent and musky covered it.
“Clear,” Dash spoke into the link. “I’m moving to the connector.”
Dawn moved to the side of the door. “In position.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “One o’clock.” She gave her position in relation to the door.
Dash came through it a second later and she barely saw him. Even with her night vision, enhanced by years of working in the darkened forests, he almost slipped by her. When she caught sight of him, he was giving her a silent order to cover him as he moved toward the bedroom.
They moved in aggressively, weapons held ready at their sides, their senses tracking the odd smell straight to the double French doors that led to the balcony outside the bedroom where the scent slowly dispersed in the night air.
“We’ve had visitors,” Dash murmured as they holstered their weapons and let Mercury begin his sweep for explosives and listening devices.
“So it would seem,” Dawn matched the near silent tone of his voice as they moved back into the bedroom and came face-to-face with Seth.
The light flipped on. The side of his face was a bit red, a long scratch scouring his scowling countenance as Dawn growled in fury that another had dared to slap her mate.
“If I hear another growl out of you, I’m going to tie you, gag you and throw you on that f**king heli-jet to be transported back to where you belong.” His gaze sliced to Dash. “I covered my part. Now you take care of yours. And get the hell out of my bedroom.”
Dawn stared back at him silently, painfully.
“Did you hear me, Dawn?” His voice was dangerously soft. “Return to your room, and do so now. I don’t have time to deal with this mess, or the hell you’re trying to throw me into, so let’s just call it quits now and get it the hell over with.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer but stalked through the bedroom into the large master bath and slammed the door behind him.
“Cold showers don’t work,” she said sadly as Dash moved past her.
“Something worked the first time,” he reminded her, his amber gaze warning. “Be careful if you’re of a mind to hold on to him, Dawn. It might work a second time.”
CHAPTER 7
Seth lowered his head and braced it against the shower wall as the stinging spray attacked him from front and back. He was breathing harshly, almost shuddering from the exquisite pleasure of the water’s caress against his flesh.
He hadn’t forgotten what this felt like, but it was worse this time. He could taste Dawn in his mouth now as he never had before. On his tongue as he licked his lips, in his senses as he tried to take a breath without feeling her on his skin.
It was the worst agony, a bittersweet pleasure enfolded in an ache that bit straight to the bone and filled him with a furious arousal.
His dick was as stiff as a poker, heavy and engorged with blood as it stood out from his body. He lowered his hand and palmed the stiff sac of his balls, grimacing as he braced his hand tighter against the shower wall at the pleasure that sang through his sensitive flesh. Even in the most hellish nights of those first few years after making the commitment to stay away from Dawn, the arousal hadn’t been this intense. Nor had the discomfort in simply touching another woman. Something so simple as Caroline’s hand against his arm, his against hers, sent shards of blistering pain through his flesh.
He forced his hand from between his thighs, forced back the need to grip the iron-hard erection and pump it to release. Because there was no relief in it; that was another lesson he had learned so long ago. He could jack off 24 / 7 and it wouldn’t him do a damned bit of good. He bit back a curse and straightened, shoving his hands through his wet hair and grabbing a waiting cloth from the rack beside him.
He soaped and washed, feeling every thread of the washcloth as he moved it over his body. And it made him think of Dawn. Of her hands, strong and sure as they gripped his shoulders, her sharp little nails as they raked across them.
He could feel the sting of the spray against the slight scratches. He hadn’t even cared when she made them. All that had mattered was the taste of that kiss, like a drug, like power flowing into him, a tidal wave of arousal and strength as he devoured her lips and tongue. And when he moved lower—he shuddered at the memory of kneeling before her, staring at the swollen bud of her clit as it peeked through the lush, glistening lips of her silken, hairless pu**y.
He ground his teeth to hold back a moan at the remembered smell of that intimate flesh. Like sunrise. Like standing on his balcony at dawn and tasting the ocean. Fresh, clean, tempting. His mouth watered at the thought of tasting her, at the anticipation that had rolled through him as he almost, just f**king almost, tasted the most lush flesh that God had ever created. And he couldn’t have it. He was a fool to kiss her. Demented if he thought he could have her now any more than he could have had her ten years ago.
What the hell was he supposed to do when he had her beneath him and the past rose in her mind and he saw the fear in her eyes? That was his nightmare. One that had chased him through ten years of fitful sleep. Dawn’s eyes widened in fear, tears filling them as she begged him to stop, and he was so aroused, so desperate to f**k her that he paused at the gates of paradise and cursed her. As he closed his eyes, he could still see the images from the disc Jonas had played years before tearing through his mind. Dawn, no more than a baby, mindless in agony and fear, begging God as those bastards told her God didn’t exist for her. And they raped her anyway. They raped her as the most inhuman sounds he had ever heard came from a child too small for the monsters that took her. If there were tears left inside him to shed, he wondered if he would shed them now. The woman he had held in the study downstairs hadn’t been a child though, and there had been no fear. She had been a temptress, wild, seductive, hungry. She had been wet and desperate for his touch, whispering his name and begging for more as he tore at her clothes. As he bit her. He hissed in a breath. He had bit her neck, sucked at it, marked it. That mark was still there for the world to see, and they would see it.
Caroline had seen it and been enraged. And he refused to feel guilty over it. He had been considering more than the occasional f**k with Caroline, but he hadn’t made her any promises. To the contrary, he had warned her a year ago that he had no promises to give her and she had refused to listen.